CAD/CAM integration for machining center work of preform raw materials like welding, casting or forging supporting fully-external setup

In view of integrating manufacturing activities including conceptual produc t design, assembly and sub-assembly design, component design, and finally t he shop practice for fabrication, CAD/CAM technology today still remains ra ther primitive.(1)2)) Improved technologies are required for direct data fl ow between CAD and CAM, as well as adaptability with existing drawing resou rces, adjusting and proving NC program to exact factory resources available for the fabrication of each component. Present study is to extend such req uired technologies for 3-Dimensional component fabricated by CNC machining centers from preform raw materials like welding, casting, or forging. The 3 -D components addressed in this research are workpieces consisting of plane r, cylindrical, or conical surfaces inclined in arbitrary angles to each ot her on which 2.5 dimensional features have to be machined. In order to faci litate direct information flow both in upstream to conceptual and assembly designs and down stream to CAM processing for the addressed type of compone nt, new concepts for component design: namely, product frame and design sur face are introduced. A new methodology for fully external setup capability for machining center work has been introduced for improved shop practice. F our different coordinate systems, which are workpiece global coordinate, su rface local coordinate, fixture coordinate and machine coordinate, are incl uded in the CAM system to support fully external setup capability.